As my grad school semester draws to a close I thought I'd share a few fun facts with you about going back to school as a seasoned adult. The changes have been chuckle-worthy and pronounced, and I'm sure I've grown in myriad of ways, I just can't quite put my finger on how, but I'll let you know when it comes to me. Then I'll write a paper about it for you, double-spaced with one-inch margins and a cover sheet.
First up is the freedom of not caring what any of my classmates think of my hair, shoes, outfit or personal hygiene. Saves a big chunk of time getting ready for class that I can then re-allot to skimming the text book chapters that I didn't quite get a chance to finish because "Glee" was on. Or "30 Rock," or "Madmen." Or "Community," which, let's face it, is like a busman's holiday for me these days. And if you're wondering why I didn't do the reading earlier in the week it's because I learned back in September that if I do the reading too far in advance, I forget what I've read by the time class rolls around. So I need to read closer to class time which suggests that I'm still the student I was all those years ago, behind in my reading but happy to participate in class and too naive to know that the combination of the two only serves to point out to anyone not texting during class that I might not have finished the reading.
On the subject of texting, big purses are key in this day and age. The big purse sits on the front edge of the desk and acts as shield to the manic texting that's going on all throughout the lecture. If I were teaching I would have a "No Purses/Bags/Backpacks On Desk" Rule and I would be loathed throughout the land. But I'm not the teacher, I'm the near-model grad student who sits in the front of the class and listens with rapt attention, hoping to regurgitate something that I learned in the last week, raise my steady hand and be able to articulate my thoughts without sounding like a complete ninny. Which, as it turns out, is a struggle.
Other struggles include navigating the APA format for bibliographies and footnotes-- as dreaded now as they were then--, finding my classroom in the poorly marked labyrinth of identical Terry Gilliam-like hallways and remembering where I parked my car. The last two I was convinced would become easier as the semester wore on and I became comfortable in my surroundings, but no. Around and around I still go, hoping to recognize a classmate if I just keep circling, afraid to leave to use the ladies room for fear of being unable to retrace my steps. The parking garage offers no solace. With each successive week, the various parking numbered decks and spots I parked my car in have blurred together and I'm left wondering if twenty-four-year-olds have the same memory retention challenges. They probably program their parking spots into their phones. Or just plain remember. Rotten kids.
Not having the time or desire to make new girlfriends or flirt with guys has also freed up exorbitant swaths of time that can now be assigned to actual learning. It boggles the mind to think about how much more I might have retained from high school and college if negotiating personal relationships had been cut out of the class time equation. No notes to read, write or pass and no furtive glances of longing or heartbreak. Just nose to the grindstone and honest hard work-- as if I were a National Merit Scholar. Or foreign student.
And not for lack of opportunity. I'm bombarded daily with university emails alerting me to new viruses, game schedules and campus traffic patters. I've been invited to the LGBT Alliance's self defense workshop-- now open to friends--, ballroom dancing and power yoga the morning after the midnight breakfast. I passed up the chance to build and airbrush a homecoming float and take part in the Women's Health Clinic symposium on what every woman should have in her tool belt. I could have listened to NJ superior court judges wax about the constitution or played badminton or cornhole with the extra-curricular folks. When I emailed to inquire about the nature of cornhole, I was congratulated for asking, before being told that it was another name for bean bag toss.
I'll admit I take better care of myself now than I did then. As everyone else gnaws on a breakfast bar or drinks a diet coke for dinner before our 8pm class, I eat a chicken pesto wrap with a side of dried apricots and almonds. I've had perfect attendance and have handed in all my papers electronically and on time to excellent marks. I've learned that you can rent your books from the bookstore and that teachers no longer pass out hand-outs in class, but you have to go online and print the hand-out yourself and bring it to class-- before the first day of class! I've learned that no one says, "Whadja get, whadja get?" when papers are handed back and I've learned the hard way how to manage my time. Even worse, I've learned that I haven't changed that much since college and still start my papers at the last minute and will do pretty much anything to procrastinate working on them-- for instance, hypothetically, writing this column.
I look at all the shiny-skinned cherubs in snug jeans and Ugg boots and think about how simple life must be for them with only a single load of laundry to do and dorm room to keep neat. Then I think about the email I once received inviting me to "Join Chef Stanley in the Cafeteria" where he will teach you "4 Ways to Make Top Ramen Noodles" and I am glad to be where I am and proud of how far I've come, but I'm sorry to have missed meeting Chef Stanley. He might have helped me find my car.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
High Infidelity
My girlfriend was telling me a story over the weekend about a friend of hers who was awoken at 5:30am by her husband of 26 years. His bags were packed, he told her; he'd rented an apartment and retained an attorney. I pictured her looking at the clock on her bedside table, maybe even groping for her glasses in an effort to put this new information into perspective, as if knowing the time might soften the blow. Maybe without her glasses on she hadn't heard him correctly. She probably said, "What?" even though she'd heard him just fine. Her head might have started to swirl, she might have even thrown up. But was this really brand new information? They'd been to counseling; their desires coaxed from them aloud. Was she really surprised or just shocked? I believe there's a subtle distinction between the two and that you can be one and not the other. Perhaps in her case the distinction didn't matter.
I asked my friend, "What's her name?" as a stab at injecting humor into the story. She knew I meant The Other Woman. But my friend said nothing as she raised her eyebrows, chin down and cocked her head at a knowing angle. Neither of us had to say that I'd hit the nail on the head. It's a story so old, so cliched that it barely merits re-telling. And yet, we tell it and listen to it over and over again without tiring. Maybe because we haven't gotten it into our thick heads. Maybe it's because we're guilty. Men want to have sex. Some more than others, but they do and that's just a fact. They want to see and touch your boobies and butt, and feel your warm, naked skin against theirs. And that's one of the main reasons they married you. Not the only reason, but certainly one of the top three. So, you can cook, clean and keep house for your husband, you can make him proud and impress his friends with your career, you can raise his children to be masters of the universe and you can listen to your husband and support him 'til you're blue in the face, but if you're not putting out, he's going to go elsewhere. It's that simple, and yet.
My friend leaned forward a bit and looked right at me as she continued, "She said that he told her that she just didn't understand him anymore, and you know when a man says that, it's usually because there's someone else who does." Bingo. Scene. Fin.
Since divorcing I've become fascinated with marriage. Why do some marriages thrive while others falter? What's the secret; what's the catch? I'm starting to think it's sex. So, I've been asking around. Turns out, yep, it is.
I could stop right there because it's really that simple and yes, Virginia, that's all there is to it, but there's more. The sex has to be good. And what makes it good for the man? The woman has to enjoy it and want it almost as often as the man. There are other factors like temperament, rhythm, proclivity and fit. And there is wiggle room in the realm of timing, taste, aural accompaniment and creativity. But it has to occur and it has to occur often.
As the saying goes, adults are just children with money. And if we continue along that trajectory, children are just golden retrievers walking upright. And dogs are really just simpletons; poofs of fur who's only desire is to eat, sleep, wrestle and be scratched. The rest is ancillary fluff. Men fit in there somewhere between children and dogs. The most educated, well-read and well-traveled man will tell you he hungers for sex, and he'll prove it to you any way he can if you don't quench that desire yourself. I see women forgetting that and I see them reminded in sad and painful ways. Every time you hear or read that a man has to desire his wife, remember, she has to want him right back as voraciously. Or else, as the years pass and her agenda is fulfilled and his physique fails to dazzle, her desire for him will wane. And he'll sense it; he'll know.
So I thought about that woman as she watched her husband walk out their bedroom door. There was nothing left to say in that moment and her main focus was probably containing the heart that was hurling itself against the cage of her chest or making just enough room for air to pass by the heaving sobs that were choking her breath. Or perhaps she just sat there, numb, wishing she had found him more attractive, regretting that his intelligence, confidence or bank account didn't translate into a log-lived hungering for his body. Wishing he'd kept more of his hair, or at least that extra thirty pounds off his girth. She knew she didn't crave him and had known it for some time. You can't fake good sex forever. She knew now that it's as important for the woman to desire her husband and didn't really blame him for leaving. She knew good sex and a lingering desire was and would always be imperative for the woman as much as the man to nurture a healthy relationship-- to survive the tempest of new passion-- and wished someone had told her that twenty-six years ago.
I asked my friend, "What's her name?" as a stab at injecting humor into the story. She knew I meant The Other Woman. But my friend said nothing as she raised her eyebrows, chin down and cocked her head at a knowing angle. Neither of us had to say that I'd hit the nail on the head. It's a story so old, so cliched that it barely merits re-telling. And yet, we tell it and listen to it over and over again without tiring. Maybe because we haven't gotten it into our thick heads. Maybe it's because we're guilty. Men want to have sex. Some more than others, but they do and that's just a fact. They want to see and touch your boobies and butt, and feel your warm, naked skin against theirs. And that's one of the main reasons they married you. Not the only reason, but certainly one of the top three. So, you can cook, clean and keep house for your husband, you can make him proud and impress his friends with your career, you can raise his children to be masters of the universe and you can listen to your husband and support him 'til you're blue in the face, but if you're not putting out, he's going to go elsewhere. It's that simple, and yet.
My friend leaned forward a bit and looked right at me as she continued, "She said that he told her that she just didn't understand him anymore, and you know when a man says that, it's usually because there's someone else who does." Bingo. Scene. Fin.
Since divorcing I've become fascinated with marriage. Why do some marriages thrive while others falter? What's the secret; what's the catch? I'm starting to think it's sex. So, I've been asking around. Turns out, yep, it is.
I could stop right there because it's really that simple and yes, Virginia, that's all there is to it, but there's more. The sex has to be good. And what makes it good for the man? The woman has to enjoy it and want it almost as often as the man. There are other factors like temperament, rhythm, proclivity and fit. And there is wiggle room in the realm of timing, taste, aural accompaniment and creativity. But it has to occur and it has to occur often.
As the saying goes, adults are just children with money. And if we continue along that trajectory, children are just golden retrievers walking upright. And dogs are really just simpletons; poofs of fur who's only desire is to eat, sleep, wrestle and be scratched. The rest is ancillary fluff. Men fit in there somewhere between children and dogs. The most educated, well-read and well-traveled man will tell you he hungers for sex, and he'll prove it to you any way he can if you don't quench that desire yourself. I see women forgetting that and I see them reminded in sad and painful ways. Every time you hear or read that a man has to desire his wife, remember, she has to want him right back as voraciously. Or else, as the years pass and her agenda is fulfilled and his physique fails to dazzle, her desire for him will wane. And he'll sense it; he'll know.
So I thought about that woman as she watched her husband walk out their bedroom door. There was nothing left to say in that moment and her main focus was probably containing the heart that was hurling itself against the cage of her chest or making just enough room for air to pass by the heaving sobs that were choking her breath. Or perhaps she just sat there, numb, wishing she had found him more attractive, regretting that his intelligence, confidence or bank account didn't translate into a log-lived hungering for his body. Wishing he'd kept more of his hair, or at least that extra thirty pounds off his girth. She knew she didn't crave him and had known it for some time. You can't fake good sex forever. She knew now that it's as important for the woman to desire her husband and didn't really blame him for leaving. She knew good sex and a lingering desire was and would always be imperative for the woman as much as the man to nurture a healthy relationship-- to survive the tempest of new passion-- and wished someone had told her that twenty-six years ago.
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